Katharine Kanter
Inscrit le: 19 Jan 2004
Messages: 1476
Localisation: Paris
|
 Posté le: Dim Juin 03, 2007 1:30 pm Sujet du message: Virtuosités + - programme de Samuel Murez |
 |
|
« VIRTUOSITES + »
Théâtre André Malraux,
Rueil-Malmaison
June 2nd 2007
At Rueil-Malmaison last night, Samuel Murez with his “Troisième étage” group of friends, (Paris Opera soloists who have their loge on Garnier’s third floor) confirms that he will be going places - provided he avoids Psychologising with a capital P.
Murez is one very sharp lad. He choreographs, he does lighting and costumes, he has enthusiasm, he can lead and organise people, and doubtless himself wrote the programme notes. These are clear, pedagogical and perfectly unpretentious.
His programme is based on short works with a strong theatrical content. “Intimate Distance” (chor. Bubenicek) and “Les Bourgeois” (van Cauwenbergh), though well-danced, are pretty hackneyed – and do NOT ASK about that opuscule from Roland Petit (“Esmeralda & Quasimodo”), loathsome enough to almost make one forget that the admirable Phavorin and Hecquet were on stage. Back to Exile where you belong, Uncle Ro!
But there was more substantial to be seen.
Murez has choreographed a short pas de deux for two men, “me2”, to a poem by to a fellow who, like Murez, is “Franco-American” – a play on me3? One hears the writer and critic Raymond Federman recite the same poem first in English, then in French, as Murez alternates on the boards with Florian Magnenet. Whatever one might think about the stream-of-consciousness techniques employed by Federman, Murez has affixed to each “thought” or “proto-thought” a mime gesture, underpinned by a dance language that is, essentially, modern dance.
Although one might see it as “updating” conventional mime gesture, there is one aspect I would ask M. Murez to consider.
Murez seems to be poking fun – gentle fun – at his own generation, twenty-year olds who see themselves as “speedé” – assaulted from all sides by electronic gadgets beeping and blipping, not a moment’s rest, not a nano-second’s stillness.
But for the images to remain in the mind thereafter, for people to go away and think about it, he must leave time for what he wants to occur, to “swim up” to the conscious mind. In other words, to change something, one is well-advised NOT to adopt quite the same tactics as one’s beeping and blipping adversary. Same problem with Balanchine – for the plastique to register, the body needs its time to produce the épaulement, and then the eye and mind of the public needs its time to take that in.
Speed is one thing - rushing another.
The next major piece was Murez own Epiphénomènes. On first view about a year ago at the small Bastille studio, with the adorable Alice Renavand as the ballerina, it worked. With a weaker lead, Murez has been tempted to tinker with his own creation. His original theme was “what would have happened if .....?”. Without consciously knowing what led us to do X, Y or Z in the first place, could one have decided otherwise in one’s own history?
Good question.
This time round, Murez has confused his original and rather intriguing non-answer, by adding an endless pas de deux, as well as a finale with the Trickster (Phavorin), chomping bananas to no good end. The original version of this worked, the latter one does not.
Also, TURN THE MUSIC DOWN. For obvious pecuniary reasons, these kids have to use a recorded sound-track. Loud music destroys the hearing cells in your inner ear. So TURN IT DOWN.
Somewhere in all this, Thibault and Froustey danced “Tchaikovsky pas de deux”. On account of the upcoming Australian tour and its attendant cast changes, one did not expect this prince to turn up and dance last night, and was therefore so dumbstruck, that a glorious moment flew past before one had blinked. However, someone seems to have taken the precaution of filming – one’s only hope under such circumstances.
To Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Paganini, “Quatre” is a study by Murez on an idea of the aforesaid Thibault: certain difficulties in the classical dance, playfully reviewed by four men. Helluva lot goin’on in here. To get some idea of how it was constructed, one would need to see it several times. Theatrically, it works, and how! That Murez has a terrific sense of humour, and has re-introduced the idea of Play into conquering difficulty, paradoxically allows the audience to realise just how goddam challenging the art form is. One heard a couple outside saying “you can see these people are experts to the tip of their fingers, but what freshness! what enthusiasm!”. Also, I would not have expected that he could get that much technique out of Messrs. Bézard and Carniato – comme quoi!
The pas de deux section of the same study, “Cordiablement” is feebler, not only because Rachmaninov’s comments on Paganini are somewhat intrusive, but because Murez has not yet found a choreographic language of his own. As he acknowledges, he has used Forsythe’s “movement generators”, to which I respond with another question - why? The first section of the pas de deux ends up looking like Forsythe, though without the ghastly hyper-extensions. The second section of “Cordiablement” is more successful, being more theatrical. The finale, “Troisème partie”, is for the women. Murez, however, does not yet entirely grasp the potentialities of female technique. For example, the ladies too can jump –, and they too can use the demi-pointe - ask Fanny Fiat.
Overall, though, a successful piece.
Personally, I hope that Murez will get his nose to the grindstone and continue to focus on mastering the classical vocabulary. Because a sense of theatre, without a rich and elaborate classical dance language, can readily dissolve into the vapid, the trivial – into the Roland Petit and the Béjart, in fact. We wouldn’t want that to happen to a lad who has so much going for him.
Great enthusiasm from the public greeted our gang, who seemed to be enjoying themselves to the hilt, playing to and off the audience and to each other - which is a great deal more than can be said for certain events out at Garnier or Bastille.
Murez, keep it up!
|
|
